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State Street Corporation, the US-based custody bank and asset manager, has hired a new head of transition management in Europe amid an increase in demand from investors rethinking their investment strategies in the volatile markets.

The group’s investment research and trading arm State Street Global Markets, has appointed Rick Boomgaardt to the newly-created role of head of its transition management desk in Europe.

Boomgaardt, who most recently helped to launch Credit Suisse’s transition management team, will be based in London and report to Edward Pennings, head of the Europe, Middle East and Africa Portfolio Solutions Group at State Street.

Pennings said: “The volatile markets are prompting many institutional investors to review and change their investment strategies and as a result, we are seeing an increase in customers engaging with us at an early state to help them rebalance their portfolios in the most efficient manner.”

Transition managers move investors' assets between fund managers at minimum cost and disruption. Requests for their services have increased during the financial crisis as investors, including pension funds, change asset managers or look to rebalance portfolios and return to strategic benchmarks.

Mark Dwyer, head of Mellon Transition Management in Europe, told Financial News in February that the growth prospects for transition managers in 2009 looked “very good”.

Demand for new business has also been fuelled by an exodus of investment banks from the sector earlier in the year, as they either moved operations out of Europe or closed divisions completely in a bid to cut costs and focus on core businesses.

Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley are among the big names to have scaled back or scrapped their transition management teams.